Seeing the Unseen
Seeing the Unseen
By: Gavin Mannino
02/06/2022 10:00 PM EST
The idea of a spirit world, a realm of spirits and ghosts that are unseeable to the human eye, have been mentioned in various religions and have been the fascination of humans since early civilization. Numerous works of literature and art throughout time have tried to explore and capture what this morbid world is like; From literary works, like Dante's Inferno and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, to visual representations in various mediums of the art world, in tv shows and movies like Ghost Hunters and the Conjuring series. What makes all these works interesting are how the artists try to convey an emotion or morality to the spirit world, whether it is good, evil, or neither. What separates Adam Fuss' My Ghost series from anything else created about the spirit world is the absence of judgment.
What draws my interest to this specific work in the My Ghost series is the beauty of the image. For having a morbid context, the Swan is visually appealing. The cloudy shades of blue and white in the photograph are calming in a way. The swan itself in the image almost seems angelic but at the same time it can have a morbid feel because of its position. The Swan is a daguerreotype, an image captured on a silvered copper plate instead of on photographic paper, and was popular process used in the late 1800's and was primarily used when making portraits of wealthy people since it was difficult and expensive to make. Through the added use of smoke in the process to create the clouds in the image, the Swan generates the feeling of death without the negative connotations.
The Adam Guss work captures beauty in a subject that can be depressing and morbid, which in and of itself is impressive and deserves recognition. I like that the piece does not try to cement a morality to the topic of death and that it is subjective to the viewer. To me, the image shows the beauty that can be in dark things, such as death, which can be difficult to explain or rationalize with. It is one of those things in life that are better shown than explained and depend on the state of mind and opinion of the viewer. The spirit world is something I find really interesting because I think it is one of life's greatest mysteries and has an attractive nature to it because it is personal to all human beings, everyone dies, and what happens after is something that concerns me. It is amazing how a single photograph can pose many questions and thoughts about a subject, especially about the subject of death.
Sources (Links):
http://www.daguerreobase.org/en/knowledge-base/what-is-a-daguerreotype.
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/193.2015/#about
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